Sheldon Whitehouse actually said...

There are legal arguments and policies that fall outside a particular political ideology. That does not make them outside the mainstream.

You have said before, Dr. Elmendorf, that health care is a very big part of our debt and deficit problem going out. Is that still true?

My belief is that solving that problem with cuts while in a recession has been proven by experience to be a failed strategy.

If discussion of the debt and deficit is nothing more than a leverage point, a fulcrum to attack spending programs...